Quote #168

No man can control his belief. If I hear certain evidence I will believe a certain thing. If I fail to hear it I may never believe it. If it is adapted to my mind I may accept it; if it is not, I reject it. And what am I to go by? My brain. That is the only light I have from Nature, and if there be a God it is the only torch that this God has given me to find my way through the darkness and night called life. I do not depend upon hearsay for that. I do not have to take the word of any other man nor get upon my knees before a book. Here in the temple of the mind I consult the God, that is to say my reason, and the oracle speaks to me and I obey the oracle. What should I obey? Another man's oracle? Shall I take another man's word - not what he thinks but what he says some God has said to him?

More from Robert G. Ingersoll

  1. My liberty ends where yours begin.
  2. No man can open his mouth against the freedom of speech without denying every argument he may put forward. Why? He is exercising the right …
  3. Mental slavery is mental death, and every man who has given up his intellectual freedom is the living coffin of his dead soul.
  4. No man in the hour of death ever regretted having been honest. No man when the shadows of the last day were gathering about the pillow of d…
  5. Marriages are made by men and women; not by society; not by the state; not by the church; not by supernatural beings.
  6. Nothing but falsehood needs the assistance of fame and place, of robes and mitres, of tiaras and crowns.
  7. Man has found that he must give liberty to others in order to have it himself.
  8. Now and then somebody examines, and in spite of all keeps his manhood, and has the courage to follow where his reason leads. Then the pious…

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